Rescuers tease Sam after Outback ordeal

Survivor Sam was lucky to have not had his eyes pecked out by hungry Aussie vultures

I’ve loved Australia from the minute I arrived here...these people are extraordinary

Sam Woodhead

Sam Woodhead was plucked to safety by a helicopter crew after getting lost on a jog in north-east Queensland and surviving 40C heat for three days.

Mum Claire Derry, who was reunited with her 18-year-old son yesterday, said: “He told me ‘The two guys in the helicopter took the piss out of me, Mum. They said they normally find people out here with their eyes pecked out’.

“He said he had to laugh.”

Sam, 18, is recovering in hospital in the remote town of Longreach after suffering sunburn and dehydration. He lost two stone in weight and stayed alive by drinking contact lens fl uid and his own urine.

Claire, 54, from Richmond in Surrey, said: “All he could say was ‘Mum, just thank these wonderful people. I’ve loved Australia from the minute I arrived here...these people are extraordinary’.”

She said his survival was down to his fitness and previous training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

She said: “Sam is physically incredibly fit. That was something I clung on to. He’d not long ago been on an appropriateness course for Sandhurst and they’d done a command post and rescue training, so I knew he had a lot of knowledge to draw on.”

Claire was flying to Brisbane from the UK when she was given the news he had been rescued.

She said: “One of the airline staff handed me this piece of paper saying Sam was found alive and well. I screamed and hugged him and hugged the rest of the crew and they brought me champagne to celebrate.”

Fitness fanatic Sam drank his small bottle of water within the first hour of his run after leaving the cattle ranch of Upshot station, where he had just started work as a “jackaroo”, mustering cattle.

But he got lost and endured crippling heat for the next three days. At night he curled up on the ground trying to sleep.

Paramedic Roger Thomson said Sam’s first words were “thank you”. He said: “All he wanted to eat was a Calypso ice block. His features were extremely sunken.

“He drank tiny sips of the contact lens fluid he had with him and that saved him.”

During the search for Sam two State Emergency Service volunteers had to be taken to hospital suffering heatstroke.

Alex Dorr, a pilot with the North Queensland Rescue Helicopter, said: “We recently had a guy who was missing for a much shorter time and he died.”